I don’t understand why a B to C event should charge admission. But I guess it’s because in a large city like NYC there are so many potential visitors.

I once heard from a Chinese conference agent (who helps tea suppliers arrange tours to international tea conferences) that quite a few of their clients went to the NYC Coffee & Tea Festival in one year and stopped going because they felt the event was not yet ready for very serious teas. But it’s a good thing that now vendors of high quality teas like Mandarin Tearoom and Den’s show up in the event. I think they will help to bring the tea side of the event to a new level.

I think it was mainly to prevent tourists from wandering in. When I arrived, there were several groups of people that were trying to gain admissions to the show. Tavalon seemed to be the main sponsor, they had three booths setup and they were right smack in front of entrance. I couldn’t find Adagio when I went, maybe they packed up and left early. Few other companies I heard of prior to attending were QTrades and Harney & Sons. I found Honest tea, but they looked a bit lonely, only one person was sitting at the booth and there was only one bottle of tea resting on the large table.

Hi Ricky, thanks for stopping by. You actually tried ‘2 Stamp Shui Xian’ from The Tea Gallery. In the few seconds we could spend with each person it was quite difficult to properly explain the two menus available at the tea room. It might not have been the easiest tea to appreciate in that setting, but the way I brewed it was representative of how it is served in the tea room (as close as possible, given the scale).

It’s interesting that you mention Fenghuang (Phoenix) dancong as being heavily roasted. In fact, in my experience, most dancong have a fairly mild roast (more roasted than some of the green oolongs that are in style now, but still not very heavy by traditional standards), but quite a bit of oxidation, which I think is a lot of what makes the dry leaves look so dark.